12 Significant Sociological Publications on
The Human Dimension of Disasters: How Social Science Research Can Improve
Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
October 27, 2003

1. Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas Clarke, Lee, ed. 2003. Terrorism and Disaster: New Threats, New Ideas. Vol. 11, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy. Stamford, Connecticut: JAI Press.

This edited volume focuses on what social scientists have learned from
9/11. The majority of authors suggest that politicians, policy makers,
or security experts have not absorbed these lessons. For example, the
research cited here shows that civilian involvement could improve the
effectiveness of counter-terrorist policy, yet it is expert systems
rather than bottom-up systems that receive the bulk of anti-terror
funding. Experts cling to the myth that civilians panic during
disasters despite decades of social science research to the contrary.
Examples are given of how large-scale bureaucracies are developed that
create hierarchies and cultures of risk acceptance and secrecy. The
result is increased citizen perceptions of civilian government and
military failure. Research shows that programs to reduce human
vulnerability are less likely to be funded than those to protect
property or technology. Volume authors distinguish between natural
disasters in which citizens pull together and technological disasters
that create “corrosive” rather than “altruistic” communities, when
lawsuits are likely to be filed because large-scale corporations refuse
to accept blame. The Exxon Valdez is an example of such a scenario. As
a result of the disparities between the findings of social science
research and the actions of politicians and policy makers, the authors
of this volume are pessimistic that the U.S. population is safer now
than prior to 9/11. To improve reaction and recovery, they call for a
review of disaster policies.

Mission Improbable enters the world of disaster and emergency
managers and experts who develop complex plans based on improbabilities
that societies can be rebuilt after nuclear war, that evacuations of
huge numbers of people after nuclear meltdowns can be effectively
carried out, and that huge oil spills can be cleaned up. It is a world
where people have to think they can control the uncontrollable. Unlike
other fantasies, though, these fantasies are important because people
represent them as real promises that can be kept. These promises are
folded into plans, which Clarke dubs "fantasy documents." Complex,
highly interactive systems increasingly insinuate themselves into
society. The justifications that are attached to those systems often
mask failures that we need to see more clearly. Fantasy documents are
used to convince audiences that dangerous systems are safe, that
experts are in charge, that all is well. Fantasy documents make danger
seem normal by allowing organizations and experts to claim that the
problems are under control. Clarke emphasizes the rhetorical nature of
managers’ and experts’ promises. Though people are increasingly
skeptical of big organizations they have no choice but to depend on
them for protection from big dangers, so they expect their experts to
tell the truth. But the reassuring rhetoric these experts construct may
have no basis in fact or experience and thus may not include the
interests of society.

This edited volume focuses on the neglect of gender issues in disasters
and the specific experiences of women. Women are less likely to be the
front-line responders, the organizational managers, the public
spokespersons, and the technical specialists than are men. In contrast,
women are expected to do the unpaid work of clean up to help families,
friends, and communities recover from disasters. As a result of
disaster, women’s unpaid work increases dramatically. The authors in
this volume agree that much systems-oriented disaster research, funded
by government agencies, avoids an analysis of social inequalities
including vulnerability to risk and access to resources for recovery.
As articles in this volume show, through specific cases from the United
States, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Australia, both vulnerability to
risk and access to resources are shaped by gender, age, physical
ability, citizenship status, and race and ethnicity. In addition,
volume authors claim that much systems research employs a “bounded
rationality” model rather than examining actual human experience of
disaster, as it varies by gender, age, physical ability, citizenship
status, and race and ethnicity. Several authors state that the less
powerful groups are the missing voices in disaster research. They call
for new models of disaster research and recovery that emphasize
empowerment rather than systems management models. The editors conclude
that “disaster specialists rarely speak in the language of empowerment,
but social justice is in fact the linchpin of effective disaster
mitigation; women’s services, organizations and grassroots advocacy can
and must make the voices of women heard—in risk assessment and hazard
planning, in crisis and in reconstructing human settlements.”

4. A New Species of Trouble. The Human Experience of Modern Disasters
Erikson, Kai. 1995. A New Species of Trouble. The Human Experience of Modern Disasters. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Disasters caused by human beings have become more and more common in
the 20th century. Unlike earthquakes and other natural catastrophes,
this "new species of trouble" afflicts persons and groups in
particularly disruptive ways. Erikson describes how certain communities
have faced such disasters. For example, the Three Mile Island and other
man-made disasters result in years of litigation to punish the
“polluter” and created community tension and acrimony. Erikson shows
that attention must be paid to the experiences of communities suffering
from these disasters if people are to maintain elementary confidence
not only in themselves but also in society, government, and even life
itself. This book illustrates how administrative power and market
forces, when they are not responsive to the people they affect, can
have devastating consequences, destroying the trust without which
people cannot live resilient lives. Erikson proposes interventions to
help communities recover from “collective trauma.”

5. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
Klinenberg, Eric. 2002. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Klinenberg's award-winning book examines the social processes that
contributed to the unprecedented death toll of 700 Chicago residents
during a one-week heat wave in July 1995. Comparisons of the 1995 heat
wave to earlier heat waves have shown that the 1995 mortality rates are
not natural and are not solely attributable to the weather. Klinenberg
shows how the social, spatial, and political structure of Chicago
contributed to the isolation and vulnerability of many of its older
citizens, especially single men. "Social autopsy" examines both the
everyday social conditions that helped produce such a massive
catastrophe, and the conditions that made the disaster so easy to
overlook, dehumanize and forget. Some of these conditions included the
denials of city officials, the mismatch between the capabilities of the
most vulnerable and the skills required to access city services, the
lack of coordination between city and privatized services, the lack of
commercial development in some areas of the city, and the anonymous
burial of the dead. Some solutions that were eventually implemented in
Chicago, included hotlines, cooling shelters, transportation to cooling
centers, door-to-door surveying of needs in areas with high numbers of
senior citizens, and monitoring of hospital emergency rooms.

6. Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United StatesMileti, Dennis. 1999. Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States. Washington D.C.: John Henry Press.

The purpose of this book is to evaluate what is known about natural
hazards and to develop ways to reduce their social and economic costs.
Seven of the 10 most costly U.S. disasters occurred between 1989 and
1994. The states of California, Texas and Florida experienced the
greatest losses from natural hazards during the study period. The major
thesis of the book is that the difficulty in reducing the costs of
losses from natural and related technological hazards in the United
States is the result of “narrow and shortsighted” development patterns
and attitudes and ideology toward the natural environment and science
and technology. The author claims that the really big catastrophes are
getting larger and will continue to get larger, partly because of the
use of technology to reduce risk. For example, building a dam or levee
may protect a community from the small- and medium-sized floods, but
additional housing or commercial development that occurs because of
this protection will mean even greater losses during a big flood that
causes the dam or levee to fail. Mileti concludes that many of the
accepted methods for coping with hazards have been based on the idea
that people can use technology to control nature to make them safe
without controlling other problems such as over-development. This book
proposes a new framework that links natural hazards to environmental
sustainability and to the social resiliency of communities.

Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological
risk. The major finding of Perrow’s book is that the conventional
engineering approach to ensuring safety—building in more warnings and
safeguards—fails because systems complexity makes failures inevitable.
He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help
create new categories of accidents. (At Chernobyl, tests of a new
safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) Systems
with sub-components that are tightly intertwined, where failure of one
part of the system occurs simultaneously with failures of other parts
of the systems are particularly at high risk. For example, at Three
Mile Island all major systems experienced failure within 13 seconds.
Under these conditions, the system operators, who work with imperfect
information, cannot figure out what is happening to the system quickly
enough. Contrast systems, whose sub-components are not tightly linked,
can respond to shocks because operators do have time to figure out what
is happening and damage can more easily be contained. The results of
“tightly coupled” systems is the immediate taking of life as well as
long-term effects that can last for generations. Perrow concludes that
systems must be designed to meet the social and cultural rationality
that most people use to operate in daily life rather than absolute
rationality. Those systems with high potential for disaster (such as
nuclear power plants) where less costly alternatives exist should be
abandoned.

8. Major Criteria for Judging Disaster Planning and Managing and Their Applicability in Developing Societies
Quarantelli, E.L. 1998. Major Criteria for Judging Disaster Planning and Managing and Their Applicability in Developing Societies. Newark, Delaware: Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware.

This publication answers the questions of what is good disaster
planning and what is good disaster management, based on more than 40
years of empirical research by behavioral and social scientists. He
suggests a series of criteria for each. Most of the research is based
on disasters that occurred in first-world countries and are only
partially applicable to third-world countries. Research suggests that
“good” planning activities emphasize the following: rehearsals, public
education, developing linkages among groups; empowering community
members to take part in planning; general planning that crosses
agencies and types of disasters; resource coordination rather than the
centralization of authority; coordination among planners including
police, hospitals, military and private sector organizations; and using
social science knowledge rather than myths and misconceptions.

Good disaster management recognizes the following: there are needs
generated by the disaster itself (e.g., exposure to flooding,
radiation) and problems generated by the response itself (such as the
effective mobilization of resources and people); there are generic
functions for all types of disasters—warnings, evacuations, sheltering,
emergency medical care, and search and rescue; there needs to be task
delegation and a division of labor so that conflicts over
responsibilities and clashes between emergent and established groups
are minimized; there needs to be multiple information flows not secrecy
or denial; overall coordination models, and the blending of emergent
and established groups (even if not planned for).

In conclusion, Quarantelli calls for systematic, cross-country research
in both first and third world countries. Although this research should
not assume that the organized systems in the first world are the best
models of disaster planning and management in the third world,
nonetheless top down models tend to have questionable results in all
countries.

9. After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York CitySorkin, Michael and Sharon Zukin. 2002. After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City. New York: Routledge.

On September 11, New York City irrevocably changed. Not just the
historic financial district—all of the city, all of the boroughs. In
After the World Trade Center, Michael Sorkin and Sharon Zukin and
seventeen of New York's urban scholars analyze the attack and its
aftermath in a broad social, economic, and political context. They
investigate lower Manhattan as a contested terrain. For example, in
recounting how the World Trade Towers were built, they describe the
neighborhoods that were destroyed to build them. The authors move
outward from Ground Zero to Queens, and then outward again to the
global conflicts that ultimately resulted in the collapse of the
sixteen-acre site. The contributors stress the fault lines that
developed between diverse economic groups in New York during the years
of boom growth, cracks that the disaster has laid bare. Ground Zero is
currently being built under the auspices of a redevelopment commission,
free of democratic oversight. The essays offer guidelines for a more
democratic New York, one where voices from all the city's communities
count, one that can check the power of “big money” and the city's
traditional power brokers, and one can that develop consensus. Through
a multitude of perspectives on the emerging city, After the World Trade Center
provides alternative visions to the power relations that are expected
in redeveloping the lower Manhattan landscape, as well as all of the
city’s communities from Tribeca to Jackson Heights.

10. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America
Steinberg, Theodore. 2000. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

The ten most costly catastrophes in U.S. history have all been natural
disasters—seven of them hurricanes—and all have occurred since 1989.
Why has there been an increase in the costs of disasters? While some
claim that nature is the problem, in fact, much of the death and
destruction has been well within the realm of human control. Surveying
more than a century of losses from weather and seismic extremes,
Steinberg exposes the fallacy of seeing such calamities as simply
random events. This book investigates the history of so-called natural
calamities, the decisions of business leaders and government officials
that have paved the way for the greater losses of life and property,
especially among those least able to withstand such blows—America's
poor, elderly, and minorities. Seeing nature or God as the primary
culprit, Steinberg argues, has helped to conceal the reality that some
Americans are better protected from the violence of nature than their
counterparts lower down the socioeconomic ladder. For example, the
hardest hit areas in hurricanes have often been low-income
neighborhoods, especially in areas without enforced building codes.
Beginning with the 1886 Charleston and 1906 San Francisco earthquakes,
and continuing to the present, Steinberg highlights the problematic
approach to natural hazards by real estate interests, the media, and
policymakers. As a result, fundamental flaws are not remedied, class
divisions are maintained, and unsafe practices continue unquestioned.
In spite of increased scientific knowledge, reckless building continues
unabated in seismically active areas and flood-prone coastal plains,
often at taxpayer expense.

This book presents an overview of the last three decades of research on
disaster preparedness and response in the United States. A major
finding is that disasters do not have random or unpredictable effects
but disproportionally harm socially vulnerable groups that are already
marginal. The authors review diverse theoretical perspectives and
explore how research sheds light on human and organizational behavior
in disasters. They also address how variations in social settings can
affect disaster preparedness and response and suggest ways in which
research-based knowledge can help improve disaster programs. For
example, risk information is filtered through discussions with friends,
relatives, and co-workers. Racial and ethnic differences influence
perceptions of what is a threat and attitudes towards agencies
disseminating information. Community organizations need to have
mechanisms for resolving conflicts among them in order to be effective.
The authors review the influences that shape the U.S. governmental
system for disaster planning and response, the effectiveness of local
emergency agencies, and the level of professionalism in the field. They
also compare technological versus natural disaster and examine the
impact of technology on disaster programs.

When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986,
millions of Americans watched. In The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane
Vaughan recreates the steps leading up to that disaster. Journalists
and investigators have historically cited production problems and
managerial wrongdoing as the reasons behind the disaster. The
Presidential Commission appointed to investigate the disaster uncovered
a flawed decision-making process at the space agency as well, citing a
well-documented history of problems with the O-ring and a dramatic
last-minute protest by engineers over the Solid Rocket Boosters as
evidence of managerial neglect. In contrast, Vaughn applies a
sociological theory that mistakes are socially organized and
systematically produced in order to answer, “Why did NASA managers, who
not only had all the information prior to the launch but also were
warned against it, decide to proceed?” In retelling how the decision
unfolded through the eyes of the managers and the engineers, Vaughan
uncovers an incremental descent into poor judgment, supported by a
culture of high-risk technology. She reveals how and why NASA insiders,
when repeatedly faced with evidence that something was wrong,
normalized the deviance so that it became acceptable to them. Vaughn
investigates how unacceptable risk became part of the taken-for-granted
aspects of the organization. For example, the economic and political
environments in which NASA operated changed so that it was no longer
viewed as a research and development agency by Congress and the White
House. Instead it was viewed as a competitive business organization
with dominant cost and efficiency goals that increased the willingness
to accept risk. NASA’s top administrators accepted these goals and
allowed for the acceptance of more risk. In addition the agencies’
culture reflected an acceptance of bureaucratic authority, structural
secrecy, and hidden constraints to disagreement. The result of context,
structure, and culture was a worldview that made high-risk normal and
blinded people to the consequences of their actions.